


And the Leap of Faith

by Sheeana



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Established Relationship, Monster of the Week, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 01:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5520473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/pseuds/Sheeana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all started, as their adventures often did, with two things: an argument and a timely interruption by the clippings book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Leap of Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



It all started, as their adventures often did, with two things: an argument and a timely interruption by the clippings book.

"Are you finished – sorry, what is it you were doing – yet?" Ezekiel asked, while he paid exactly no attention to what Jake was actually doing on the other side of the table.

"Reading," Jake growled.

"You finished reading yet? And no offense, but it doesn't look like reading-"

"Yeah, well, you try figuring out Sumerian script that's been sandblasted for a few thousand years-"

"No thanks. Think I'll stick to being the sneaky one."

"You think you're sneaky? What was that last job, then, where you lost the four thousand-year old tablet and almost got us killed in a landslide?"

"A fluke?"

"Great. Just great. My life's in your hands all the damn time and you can't even-"

"Stop. Stop!" Cassandra said. "Just, both of you, stop for a minute. Please?"

Jake sighed, set down the stone tablet he was deciphering, and looked up at her. "We're fine-" 

"No. I mean, I know you're fine. Look." She pointed at the clippings book, which had come alive with new images and newspaper articles for them.

"What's this? "Archaeological dig uncovers long-lost Egyptian tomb." Yep, that sounds like us," said Ezekiel.

"Look here, "American archaeologist succumbs to rare virus three weeks after returning from Cairo dig," and "Twelve Cairo workers perish in tragic accident,"" Jake read out. "Yeah, that's us."

"Oooh. A curse," Cassandra said, and she grinned. "Fun! Ten minutes?"

"Ten minutes," Ezekiel agreed. As one, they wheeled around and then split up to head deeper into their respective nooks of the Library.

Ten minutes later, they were all assembled near the door in their best desert tomb hunter clothes (meaning that Jake had put on a hat, Ezekiel was wearing his least-favorite pair of jeans, and Cassandra was wearing sturdy, comfortable shoes with her colorful skirt). While they waited for the boys, she and Jenkins had gathered all the material they had on the tomb and the dig that had uncovered it, and she was holding it in a folder in her arms. She handed it to Jake, who skimmed the file before he passed it on to Ezekiel.

"Jenkins," she said when they were ready, beaming at him, "Dial up Cairo. We're going on an adventure!"

"Already done, Ms. Cillian. Try not to anger any mummies this time. It took days to clean out all the dust you tracked in the last time you visited Egypt."

"Will do," Ezekiel said, giving him a fake little salute with two of his fingers as he ducked through the doorway.

Jake tipped his hat on his way through. That left Cassandra, who managed a sheepish and apologetic smile for Jenkins before she was following them through.

They emerged into intense dry heat and the sun beating down on their skin. Cassandra's clothes were instantly sticking to her body. She made a face and picked at her shirt. One of their recent adventures had taken them to Norway; right now, she'd give anything to go back.

"Where to?" asked Ezekiel distractedly. His attention had been drawn to a group of passing tourists, who were loudly chattering about visiting the pyramids. 

"The museum that sponsored the dig's gotta know something," said Jake. "'Least we can talk to Professor Rodriguez's assistant. He was there. Gotta be able to tell us something about what happened down there."

"It's worth a try," said Cassandra.

"Yeah, you guys go on ahead, I'll… catch up…" Ezekiel said vaguely. He stretched his fingers and pocketed his phone.

After they gave each other a long-suffering look, Jake took one of Ezekiel's arms and Cassandra took the other. Then they gently but forcibly pulled him away from the tourist he'd been about to pickpocket.

"You guys are no fun," Ezekiel muttered, but he held up his hands in surrender and relented.

~

"Fake, fake, fake," Jake was reciting half an hour later, as he moved from one museum display case to another, examining their contents. "Every single one's a fake. Has anyone here ever even seen a Middle Kingdom vase? 'Cause they sure as hell don't look like this."

"I'm telling you, the security here is useless. Completely useless. Anyone could walk in here and steal something," Ezekiel said. He was looking at a gold necklace like he was a little kid on Christmas morning who had just come down to find the living room filled with presents. His fingers twitched at his sides. 

Jake reached over to lightly slap his hand away before it reached the corner of a display case.

"He's dead," said Cassandra bluntly, when she came back from speaking to a museum employee. "The professor's assistant had a heart attack and he's been dead for a week. Which means, counting the workers and that construction accident, no one who discovered the tomb is alive anymore."

"Great. My favorite kind of mystery. The one where everyone dies," Ezekiel said, and he sighed. "Why doesn't it ever send us somewhere nice?"

"You can leave anytime," said Jake. "Door's back that way."

"Are you kidding? Tombs filled with treasure are the only reason why I'm here."

Cassandra coughed politely. "The _only_ reason?" she said, arching her eyebrow.

"Okay, the main reason," Ezekiel allowed. "You two are a close second."

Jake rolled his eyes in the exact same way he usually did, and Cassandra knew that he meant it exactly as much as he usually did. "That's great that you're being all sappy and all, but what's our game plan for this cursed tomb? Back to the Library, do some more research?" 

"I guess there's only one option," Cassandra said. 

Ezekiel's attention was piqued enough that he looked up from the locked cabinet filled with gold jewelry. "Which is?" 

"We need to go into the tomb and see for ourselves," she said. "That's what we do, right? It's where we'll end up eventually." 

"The tomb that killed everyone who went into it," said Ezekiel. "Yeah, sounds like a great idea. Remind me why I do this again?"

~

"Okay," said Cassandra, as she stared down into the dark opening in the sand, "Scary tomb, mysterious curse, Librarians to the rescue. Easy peasy."

"It's not too bad. Should be fun," said Ezekiel, though he sounded a lot less overconfident than usual now that they were standing in front of the gaping maw of a cursed tomb. He came up beside her and casually, nonchalantly slipped his hand into hers. It had taken awhile, but they were all getting better at this team thing - and the other thing, too. The relying on each other part was what had come easy. It was the being _reliable_ part that took some work.

"Aw, come on, you all scared of a bit of excitement now?" Jake teased, slapping Ezekiel on the back as he joined them. He also didn't sound nearly as overconfident as usual. Hesitantly, Cassandra reached out to touch his hand and then, when she was sure he wasn't going to overreact, hold it for a second. He gave her an unreadable look.

They were getting better at this.

Jake got a torch going, and they started down the hewn stone stairs that descended into the musty darkness. Cassandra gripped the file with all their information and leads tight between her hands. Ezekiel had his phone out again, but he wasn't doing anything with it. She was learning to get a feel for magic that had gone awry, and dark magic that had never existed for anything but a nefarious purpose. Something about this place felt wrong. She would have mentioned it to the others, but she figured they must feel it too. They were all Librarians, after all.

They went down and down and down until suddenly the stairs stopped and the entrance shaft opened up into a large rectangular chamber. Two openings led off the main room, presumably to smaller chambers. After they'd each lit a torch from the one Jake was carrying, they spread out to investigate. Ezekiel took great interest in a blank patch of wall across from the entrance. Cassandra started pacing around the perimeter and doing measurements in her head. Jake disappeared through each of the side passages and then reappeared a moment later, muttering to himself something about the layout being wrong.

Not two minutes later, they all converged on the middle of the far wall.

"The layout's not right," said Jake.

"Why isn't it symmetrical?" said Cassandra.

"This wall's got nothing behind it," Ezekiel informed them.

"Secret passage," they all said together, when the realization struck them all at once.

Then they got busy looking for the way to open it. Jake checked the floor while Cassandra and Ezekiel ran their hands along the walls. Ezekiel found it with a triumphant hoot a few minutes later, and then they were all staring down a dark passageway for the second time in less than twenty minutes.

"Well, would you look at that," Jake whistled, as the light from their torches illuminated the walls of the passageway, revealing the hieroglyphs carved into the flat stone from the floor to the ceiling. As if he couldn't help himself, he started down the tunnel like a moth drawn to a flame.

"Jake, wait-" Cassandra just missed grabbing his arm to keep him back until they'd assessed the danger they might be in.

"Look at that," he said, marveling at the intricacy and sheer size of the story written on the walls. He brushed his fingers over the still-crisp edges of the carvings, over the paint that still popped with color thousands of years after it had been brushed on.

Back near the entrance behind them, a soft moaning noise began to emanate from the walls, the floor, the tomb itself. Cassandra whirled around to face it. She might not have been too concerned if she didn't swear she could see something moving in the darkness on the far side of the room. She might not have been too concerned if the noise weren't slowly getting louder. She certainly would have been less concerned if she hadn't realized that it sounded like a voice. A deep, ancient voice, howling and wailing to be freed. A voice that tugged at her soul and begged her to stay with it, never to leave, to let herself change and be made into something different, be made whole, be made _powerful_.

She blinked.

"That's a beauty," Jake was saying, more to the wall than to Ezekiel and Cassandra. "Fresh as the day it was made."

"Not _now_ ," Cassandra hissed. She stepped into the secret passageway to tug on Jake's arm. "We need to go!"

"But-"

"Seriously?" Ezekiel said. "Seriously?!"

"When's the next time I'm gonna get to see a frieze in an Egyptian tomb in person?"

Cassandra tugged on his arm a second time. "We can come back next week when we're not about to be attacked or- or disintegrated by ancient dark magic!" 

The look on Jake's face as he ran his fingertips across the hieroglyphs was pained. "You better not say something like that unless you mean that."

"We promise," Ezekiel and Cassandra insisted, both at the same time and both very emphatically.

"Fine," Jake said, and he allowed himself to be led away. 

When Cassandra glanced over her shoulder, there was definitely something emerging from the darkness beyond the pool of light surrounding their torches. She grabbed their hands and they all ran faster. The tunnel seemed to go on forever, taking a few twists and turns along the way. If she hadn't believed Jake about the layout being wrong before, she believed it now. There was no reason to build a tomb like this.

They stumbled out into a circular room this time. Whatever had been chasing them stopped, abruptly and without warning, at the entrance to the chamber. They breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"… Now that's what I call treasure," Ezekiel said appreciatively, when they finally took notice of the pedestal in the center of the chamber. It was the only thing in the room, yet it seemed to fill the entire space as much as a mountain of gold and jewels would have done. 

Sitting on the pedestal inside an impossible beam of light was a small statue. It was a man with a bird's head, and it was glowing with every color imaginable. Cassandra found herself entranced, found herself being pulled away into that world of colors and shapes and numbers that lived inside her head. She could smell something fresh and minty. If she hadn't suddenly remembered to pinch her arm, she might have let herself drift away into the sounds and the scents and the bright, vivid colors.

Meanwhile, Jake was looking at the floor. "Footprints," he said unhappily. "I'm gonna go ahead and assume Professor Rodriguez and his team found their way in here, but no archaeologist worth his salt's leaving something like that down here, which means either that statue is the source of all this magic or I'm not a Librarian."

"The pedestal and the beam of light didn't give it away for you?" Ezekiel said, eyebrows raised.

"The pedestal," Cassandra said slowly. She glanced around the room. There were six exits, including the one they'd come through. She walked over to the pedestal and began to circle it, and something began to take shape in her mind. "The geometry of the room. The angles of the corridors, the circumference of the pedestal… multiply by seven point six four, then square the root of the diameter of the room…" Her hands started to move. She drew pictures in the air, traced the lines and mumbled to herself.

Somewhere between the quadratic equation and mapping out the constellations as they would have appeared in the Egyptian sky at this precise time of year, the ground began to shake. The floor opened up and swallowed the pedestal and the precious statue it was holding. Cassandra had just enough time to glance up and watch the ceiling cave in between her and the others before everything went dark.

For a few moments, there was nothing but settling dust and silence. It was broken by the sound of scrambling fingers.

"Cassie?!" Jake shouted. His fingers searched along the rough edges of the fallen rocks, mindless of the way they scratched and stung at his skin. "You in there? Damn it. Damn it…"

Ezekiel spent about half a second considering his own safety, and then discarded that idea to join Jake in trying to find a way through the wall that was now separating them from her. "Cassandra!"

On the other side of the rocks, Cassandra sat up abruptly. She put her hand on her chest and coughed when she inhaled a breath of dust and sand. The first thing she did was feel around to see if Ezekiel and Jake were all right, and when they were nowhere to be found, she found herself completely incapable of forming a plan.

"Cassie! If you're in there, you better answer-"

"I'm here," she said, so relieved to hear his voice she almost choked on the words. "I'm here, but I don't know where here is. Are you- Is Ezekiel there too? Are you okay? Please, please be okay."

"I'm good. Door we came in's gone, but we're fine," said Ezekiel. "Are you?"

"I think so." She felt around her body, and then breathed a sigh of relief. "I don't think anything's broken. I'm just a little bruised."

Jake's voice came from somewhere further away behind the wall of rocks. "We know what happened yet? Egypt's not exactly known for earthquakes. If that was an earthquake, sure as hell wasn't a normal one."

"That leaves magic," said Ezekiel.

"The statue's gotta be the source," Jake said. "Too bad it's gone. That's gonna come back and bite us in the ass later. But forget that. More importantly, how are we gonna get you out of there?"

"I think…" Cassandra took a moment to feel around the floor, until she found the flashlight that had been in her pocket. The papers in the file she'd been carrying were scattered all around her, but they weren't really useful anymore. She turned on the flashlight and then looked around the room, taking in the damage. "There were six exits to this room, right? I can still see two of them. Six exits, a circle, six exits… Oh! Oh, I got it. It's a maze," she said excitedly, her voice going bright and bubbly when she realized that she was going to make it after all. "I can find my own way out. All I need to do is make a map. Easy peasy!"

She got up and started across the room, but stopped very, very suddenly just before her foot crossed a line that hadn't been on the floor before. Not just one line, she realized belatedly, as she held up her flashlight. A grid. Tentatively, she touched her foot down on one of the squares and then jumped back. A metal spike came flying across the room where her head would have been if she'd actually taken that step forward.

"Um." She looked right, looked left, but there was no other way out. "Guys?"

"What is it?" 

"The floor changed. It's not just flat anymore. There are stone tiles with symbols on them, and I think they're booby-trapped. That's… not good, right? I need to get across to leave."

"It could be better," Jake said. "Tell me what the symbols look like. Are they hieroglyphs?"

"I don't know. Maybe? There's one of those Egyptian pharaohs holding two rods, and then a bird – I think it's a crow? – and a hooded person," she rattled off, eyes moving from stone to stone. "There are more, though. A lot more."

There was a moment of hesitation, an unmistakable undercurrent of doubt that she heard in his voice. "Okay, read them out to me in order. What's the first one on the left?"

"A person riding a horse." 

"And the next one?"

"A man with wings and a beard." She moved along from left to right and bottom to top, telling him each symbol in turn, hoping she was describing them well enough. She didn't want to find out what the consequences would be if she didn't.

"I think I got it. Cassie, step on the second stone from the right."

"Are you sure?" she asked, hesitating without knowing exactly why.

"Yeah. It's a code. Go ahead and step on that one. … Wait. No. Wait a second!" 

She stopped and recoiled _just_ before her foot touched the floor. "What is it?!"

"Maybe it's not a code. Damn it, I don't know."

Ezekiel intervened before Cassandra gathered her thoughts and her wits enough to answer. "Stop! Mate, just stop. You're not helping. Cassandra?"

"Yes?" she said, her voice only barely shaky.

"You trust me?"

"You know I do," she said. "Absolutely, I do. With my life."

"Great. You can do this, yeah? You can figure this out."

She looked at the symbols again and tried to breathe, tried to figure it out, but her brain was going haywire and she couldn't make it focus. "Ezekiel?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it bad to say I'm scared?"

"Don't be. You can hear us, right?"

"Yes, but-"

"So just go ahead and do your thing. If you need help, we're here."

"But you told Jake to stop-"

"Yeah, well, he wasn't helping. You know what you're doing. We're just here if you need us."

After she took a deep breath, she nodded, even though they couldn't see her. Maybe it was for herself more than for them.

This time, when she looked at the symbols, they seemed to make more sense. Almost as if she knew what they meant. Almost as if they were calling to her, like that voice in the main chamber, like the sense of foreboding she got when they went somewhere magical, like every magical artifact they'd found for months. She didn't know what was happening to her. On the other hand, now wasn't the time to try to figure it out. There were times to be curious and times to just run with it.

"Jake?" she said calmly, as she studied the floor grid, "A minute ago, when you were asking me about the symbols, you hesitated. Why did you do that?"

"Cassie, I don't-" He sounded torn, and she almost wished she hadn't asked. But there was only one way out, and she needed all the information she could get.

"Do you trust me?" she asked.

There was a long silence. It dragged on and on, and Cassandra thought she might be running out of air even though she knew it wasn't true. They were over this. They'd been over this for months. She needed them to be over this.

"… It's death," Jake said reluctantly, finally. "They're all symbols of death. They're not all the right time period and they're not even all Egyptian. There's other cultures in there too."

And just like that, Cassandra wasn't afraid anymore.

She was quiet for awhile. She counted the stones. She let herself fall into the feeling that swept her up when she was near something magical. She made maps in the air with her fingertips, went through every possible combination. She wiped the blood from her nose away on her sleeve. Finally, she counted back from ten to center herself before she took the first step.

"… Okay," she laughed, when the floor didn't fall away and nothing came crashing down on her head, "One down, only seven to go…"

She practically danced across the rest of them, her feet barely touching each stone before she was onto the next. The map she'd made in her mind kept her from straying from safety. Just before the last of the eight stones, though, she paused.

"I do," she said suddenly, before her foot touched the floor. She was certain that she'd gotten it right. She was absolutely certain, but there was always that tiny chance she was wrong, that small possibility that these would be the last words she ever said. It was a possibility she carried with her everywhere she went. Every step she took might be the last one. Every thought she had might be her last. Every word she said had to count. That was why she always said so many of them.

"Sorry? You do?" Ezekiel asked, still just on the other side of the wall, waiting for her.

"I do need you," she confessed. "I need both of you. There are three of us and that's the only way this ever works, and it's the only way I want to be a part of it. There. That's all. I said what I needed to." 

She brought her foot down to the floor. 

Nothing happened.

"… Cassandra?" Ezekiel ventured, after what seemed like an interminable silence that she didn't want to be the one to break. "You… good over there?"

"I'm fine." She let out a breath she'd been holding, and lifted her gaze to the two doorways leading away from the chamber. "You two take care of each other. I'll find you as soon as I can, okay?"

"You be careful now," Jake said sternly. "Don't go getting into any trouble without us."

"I'll do my best," she promised. "See you soon?"

"See you soon," Ezekiel echoed, and then she took that first step into the darkness alone.

~

An hour later, Jake and Ezekiel were growing more and more sure that they were walking in circles.

"This adventure has turned out to be a solid disaster," said Ezekiel, irritable and not even trying to keep it from showing. "We come down here, we find the magic artifact, we lose the magic artifact, and we lose our third Librarian. Great job we're doing! It's a good thing Flynn decided to trust us to go off on our own!"

"Hey, it's not my fault we got lost."

"You're the one who said to go left at that last intersection."

"You're the one who agreed with me! And where's Cassie got herself to? We haven't seen hide nor hair of her since we left the statue room."

"Probably a lot less lost than we are," said Ezekiel.

They walked in silence for awhile after that. Once, Jake thought he heard something, so he threw up his arm to stop Ezekiel in his tracks. When nothing appeared to attack them or otherwise ruin their day even further, he dropped it and they kept walking. And walking, and walking, and walking.

"Wish I'd worn better shoes," said Ezekiel, to no one in particular.

"It's the writing!" Jake said suddenly. He came to a stop as he snapped his fingers. "It's the writing."

" _What's_ the writing?" Ezekiel snapped.

"Some people used to believe writing was magic."

"And?"

"And the writing on that wall was magic! Probably connected to the statue somehow."

"So what do we do?"

"People believed that whatever was in the writing was real, and anyone who reads it makes it come true. The story on the wall, it was about magic rituals and death. Reading it made it come true."

"So what do we do?" Ezekiel repeated, rolling his eyes.

"We stop reading?" Jake said, rolling his eyes right back. 

"So you're saying this _is_ all your fault then?"

"Shut up! How was I supposed to know?"

"Look, it's done. Water under the bridge, mate. Unless… does any of this help us get out of here?" 

"Nope," said Jake. "Not even a little bit."

"Where's Eve and Flynn when you need them?"

"On that perpetual honeymoon of theirs," Jake muttered.

Ezekiel groaned. "I'd ask where's Cassandra when you need her, but."

"Yeah," Jake agreed. What went unspoken: they always needed her. Two thirds of a team was no team at all.

"I'm right here," Cassandra said innocuously, making a timely appearance at his side from out of the darkness. Her skirt was streaked and stained with dust and dirt, and she was scratched and bruised from the rubble, but they were all more or less in one piece. Some days, she counted that as a point for Team Librarians, even if the bad guy got away or they didn't find the piece of magic they were looking for.

Jake turned to her and wordlessly hugged her. She closed her eyes and let it happen, just for a moment, before she pulled away – right into Ezekiel giving her a quick peck on the lips, which she took to mean he was glad to see her.

"So?" Jake glanced at her when she and Ezekiel had stepped away from each other and they were all standing together in the feeble light of their flashlights.

"So…?"

"You think you can get us out of here?"

"Sure," she said brightly. "I mean, I think so. I found you, didn't I?"

She looked down when she felt Ezekiel's hand in hers, and then she held out her other hand to Jake. "Might as well?" she said, shrugging and smiling sheepishly.

He took her hand. She started walking.

Some time later, after she'd taken them on a zigzagging path towardss where she knew the exit was, they came to a crossroads. The corridor branched off into two. One led left; the other led right. Both went vaguely in the direction they needed to go.

She came to a stop, peering down first one and then the other. She closed her eyes and worked her way back through the mental map she'd been making from the moment they entered the tomb in the first place. Then she dropped their hands so she could trace numbers in the air, calculate the probability that each choice was the right one.

"Left or right?" Ezekiel finally asked, when she'd gone quiet for awhile.

Cassandra bit down on her lip, looked left and then right. Finally, she looked up at Ezekiel. He'd been standing there patiently, waiting for her to decide. Not even thinking to take a chance or a wild guess. Waiting for her. "Do you trust me?" she asked, smiling.

"Would I be here if I didn't?"

She turned to the right. 

It was mid-morning when they finally found daylight again. The sun was beating down on the sand and Cassandra was instantly uncomfortably warm, but she didn't let go of their hands. She didn't stop smiling. She couldn't.

Ezekiel bumped Jake's side with his elbow. "At least we're not bringing any mummies back with us?" 

"That might make Jenkins feel a little better about how we accidentally destroyed an Egyptian tomb, _and_ we're not coming back with the magic statue that was causing all the mayhem," Cassandra said, wincing.

"Y'know," Jake said, "It's too bad about the statue. I guess it's some other Librarian's problem now."

As inconspicuously and casually as can be, Ezekiel hefted the small but surprisingly heavy statue up in his hand. The bird-shaped head caught the light, but it was inert now, no longer glowing or iridescent or breathtakingly beautiful. Just an ordinary statue, powerless and safe in the hands of a Librarian.

"Chalk another one up to the Librarians," he said proudly.

Cassandra blinked. "How did you-?"

Jake boggled at it. "When did you- Wait. _Where_ did you-"

"A gentleman never kisses and tells," Ezekiel replied, with an accompanying smug smile plastered on his face.

"Okay," Cassandra said, grinning as she leaned in to kiss his cheek and then fell back laughing against Jake's side, "I won't tell as long as you don't."

~The End~


End file.
